May 13, 2006

Don't Sell To Onex

A company called Onex- not to be confused with the famed rap group Onyx- is said to be bidding on Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., the consortium that owns both Philly dailies as well as my paper, the Trend Leader. And if a report in the Inquirer yesterday is accurate, it better not be them:

Teamsters officials say Onex has sought Teamsters assurance that drivers, pressmen and mailers, in exchange for preserving their own jobs, would not oppose attempts to eliminate hundreds of newsroom jobs. The two papers employ about 525 journalists, almost one-fifth of their total workforce.

It's not just that I want to keep my job. The dailies (especially the Daily News) are skeletal enough as it is. It'll be nice to know that the drivers will still get paid well enough to deliver a paper that barely exists.